Getting the hardware and software infrastructure of the data center ready is the first step, and often the easy step, in preparing an efficient data center. The next step is to bring in the tools that will make data centers run as efficiently as possible while being able to serve multiple internal and external customers.

Some tools monitor data center functions to ensure cooling, power consumption, and other operations are in line with expectations. Other tools warn of potential problems and may offer recommendations to fix those problems or, increasingly, automatically make the required fixes. Many of these tools fall in the category of data center infrastructure management, commonly referred to as DCIM. Here we present 20 data center tools providers from the 2014 Data Center 100.